Delayed Flight? Here’s How to Pass the Time

One-Hour Delay

• 20 minutes: Listen to the miked-up buskers stationed around the airport, like Champagne Sunday, self-described as “Pearl Jam meets Bette Midler” and Billy Brandt (pictured).
• 10 minutes: Find the most expensive bottle of booze in the open-to-everyone duty-free shop in the South Satellite. It might be the $3,640 bottle of Hennessy, since only international flyers are allowed to buy the $13,000 Remy Martin. 
• 30 minutes: Peace out in the quiet zone (Concourse B, Gate 4) with power outlets but no blaring TV, or in the meditation room above Checkpoint 3.

Three-Hour Delay

• 60 minutes Indulge in a mani-pedi ($66) at Butter London on Concourse C, where the hand and foot massage is lovely and the polish job is…well, no one looks at your nails that closely anyway.
• 15 minutes Sit for an old-fashioned shoe buff ($5). Ladies be warned: They work magic on street-battered leather boots, but getting a shoe shine in a skirt is a dangerous game. 
• 60 minutes Savor one (or four) of your last truly good ales—like Black Raven Trickster or Bale Breaker Pale—at Seattle Taproom before leaving the Northwest beer bubble.
• 45 minutes Doze in the South Satellite, where the center area has the holy grail of airport amenities: love seats with no middle armrest. Sprawl! Sprawl like the wind!

Five-Hour Delay

• 15 minutes Load up on relaxation supplies at the kitschy Affordable Luxuries (motto: “All are welcome”). Both pashminas and fold-up travel flats come in leopard print, so you’ll single–handedly return glamour to air travel.
• 90 minutes Nap in an airport lounge, even without a first-class ticket. The hoi polloi can access the Club at SEA for $35 or Alaska Airlines Board Room for $45, and American Express cardholders can buy their way (for $50, or free with a premium card) into the Centurion Studio, with its free Georgetown beers and Jones sodas. 
• 30 minutes Take a 30-minute art walk that begins near the Central Terminal Starbucks and winds a half mile through the terminal and past 16 permanent art installations. QR code plaques track your progress and explain the works.
• 90 minutes Drop $137 at the Massage Bar in Concourse C, which buys an hour of seated massage and 30 minutes of foot rubbing.
• 60 minutes Wake up that postpampered body by running stairs at the South Satellite (62 steps from the people mover to gate level).
• 15 minutes Buy a vending-machine lottery ticket in the Central Terminal and dream-spend the scratch-off millions before facing the reality of a $2 win. 

Published in the Secrets of Sea-Tac issue of Seattle Met.